plied to me before and I have answered always in the same tone.

'I have read what you say of the book on the succession; of the Queen's anger; and of the suspicions indicated to you by Lord Robert that Cecil was at the bottom of it. I avail myself of the occasion to tell you my opinion of that Cecil. I am in the highest degree dissatisfied with him. He is a confirmed heretic; and if with Lord Robert's assistance you can so inflame the matter as to crush him down and deprive him of all further share in the administration, I shall be delighted to have it done. If you try it and fail, be careful that you are not yourself seen in the matter.'

Over such mines of secret enmity walked Cecil, standing between his mistress and her lover, and never knowing what a day would bring forth.

August.

At the beginning of August the Court broke up from Richmond. Elizabeth went on progress, and for a time had a respite from her troubles. Among other places she paid a visit to Cambridge, where she had an opportunity of showing herself in her most attractive colours.

The divisions of opinion, the discrepancies of dress and practices by which Cambridge, like all other parts of England, was distracted, were kept out of sight by Cecil's industry. He hurried down before her, per

thought about Lord Robert. Philip | platicas que os avisó mi Embajador answers- En lo de aquel caballero que habia tenido con su Santidad, Ingles que se tuvó en Roma, y sospechamos lo mismo que vos.'

suaded the college authorities for once into obeying the Act of Uniformity; ordered the fellows and chaplains to appear in surplices; concealed the dreary communion tables in the college chapels behind decent coverings; and having as it were thrown a whitewash of order over the confusion, surprised the Queen into an expression of pleasure. The Church of England was not, after all, the miserable chaos which she had believed; and 'contrary to her expectation, she found little or nothing to displease her.'

She was at once thrown into the happiest humour; and she moved about among the dignitaries of the University with combined authority and ease. She exchanged courtesies with them in Latin; when they lauded her virtues she exclaimed 'Non est veritas ;' when they praised the virgin state she blessed them for their discernment: she attended their sermons; she was present at their disputations; and when a speaker mumbled she shouted 'Loquimini altius.' The public orator addressed her in Greek-she replied in the language of Demosthenes. On the last day of her visit she addressed the University in Latin in the Senate House. In a few well-chosen sentences she complimented the students on their industry; she expressed her admiration of the colleges and chapels-those splendid monuments of the piety of her predecessors. She trusted, if God spared her life, she might leave her own name not undistinguished by good work done for England.

Not one untoward accident had marred the harmony of the occasion. The Queen remained four days; and

left the University with the first sense of pleasure which she had experienced in the ecclesiastical administration. Alas! for the imperfection of human things. The rashness of a few boys marred all.

Elizabeth had been entreated to remain one more evening to witness a play which the students had got up among themselves for her amusement. Having a long journey before her the following day, and desiring to sleep ten miles out of Cambridge to relieve the distance, she had been unwillingly obliged to decline.

The students, too enamoured of their performance to lose the chance of exhibiting it, pursued the Queen to her resting-place. She was tired, but she would not discourage so much devotion, and the play commenced.

The actors entered on the stage in the dress of the imprisoned Catholic bishops. Each of them was distinguished by some symbol suggestive of the persecution. Bonner particularly carried a lamb in his arms at which he rolled his eyes and gnashed his teeth. A dog brought up the rear with the host in his mouth. Elizabeth could have better pardoned the worst insolence to herself: she rose, and with a few indignant words left the room; the lights were extinguished, and the discomfited players had to find their way out of the house in the dark, and to blunder back to Cambridge.1

It was but a light matter, yet it served to irritate

enough is not mentioned by Nicolls, who details with great minuteness the sunny side of the visit to the

1 De Silva to the Duchess of Parma, August 19: MS. Simancas. De Silva was not present, but described the scene as he heard it from University: Progresses of Elizabeth, an eye-witness. The story naturally | 1564.

Elizabeth's sensitiveness. It exposed the dead men's bones which lay beneath the whited surface of University good order; and she went back to London with a heart as heavy as she carried away from it. The vast majority of serious Englishmen, if they did not believe in transubstantiation, yet felt for the sacrament a kind of mysterious awe. Systematic irreverence had intruded into the churches; carelessness and irreligion had formed an unnatural alliance with Puritanism; and in many places the altars were bare boards resting on tressels in the middle of the nave. The communicants knelt, stood, or sat as they pleased; the chalice was the first cup which came to hand; and the clergymen wore surplice, coat, black gown, or their ordinary dress, as they were Lutherans, Calvinists, Puritans, or nothing at all.1

The parish churches themselves, those amazing monuments of early piety, built by men who themselves lived in clay hovels while they lavished their taste, their labour, and their wealth on the house of God,' were still dissolving into ruin. The roofs were breaking into holes; the stained whitewash was crumbling off the damp walls, revealing the half-effaced remains of the frescoed stories of the saints; the painted glass was gone from the windows; the wind and the rain swept through the dreary aisles; while in the churchyards swine rooted up the graves.

And now once more had come a reaction like that

1 Varieties used in the administration of the service, 1564: Lansdowne MSS.

which had welcomed Mary Tudor. In quiet English homes there arose a passionate craving to be rid of all these things; to breathe again the old air of reverence and piety; and Calvinism and profanity were working hand in hand like twin spirits of evil, making a road for another Mary to reach the English throne.

The progress being over, Elizabeth returned to the weary problems which were thickening round her more and more hopelessly. From France came intelligence that ' a far other marriage was meant for the Queen of Scots than the Lord Robert; with practices to reduce the realm to the old Pope, and to break the love between England and Scotland.' The Earl of Lennox had been allowed to cross the Border at last as a less evil than the detaining him by violence; but Cecil wrote from Cambridge to Maitland, 'making no obscure demonstration of foul weather.' Parliament was expected to meet again in October, and with Parliament would come the succession question, the Queen's marriage question, and their thousand collateral vexations. Either in real uncertainty, or that she might have something with which to pacify her subjects, Elizabeth was again making advances towards the eternal Archduke. His old father Ferdinand, who had refused to be trifled with a second time, was dead. Ferdinand had left the world and its troubles on the 25th of July; but before his death, in a conversation with the Duke of Wurtemburg, he had shown himself

1 Sir T. Smith to Cecil (cipher), Sept. 1, 1564: French MSS. Rolls House.